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For us, summer time means a lot of things, and one of them is what we like to call “carny season”. Yep. That’s right, I just called us carnies. We do a lot of craft shows and poster shows, aka Flatstocks all through the spring & summer and travel around the country to participate in them. And? We love it.

One of our favorite shows is coming up this weekend, hooray! It’s the Chicago Flatstock 26, which happens during the super dupes Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park, smack in the middle of Chicago. We’ll be there showing a giant new crop of posters and Test Prints as well as art prints and more. So please say hello when you drop by Flatstock! We love meeting new folks at shows, big time.

AND! If you are going to be at Pitchfork, don’t forget to enter this FREE CONTEST to win a huge stack of posters from your favorite poster artists! For more info & to enter to win, simply click here! *Winner must be present to claim their prize.*

The Flatstock Poster Show series is presented by the American Poster Institute (API), of which all Flatstock artists are members. Flatstock is an ongoing series of exhibitions featuring the work of many of the most popular concert poster artists working today. Most posters and the rock poster artists who show at Flatstocks are working in the silkscreen mediums, often using hand printed techniques and are working for current bands and musical artists.

Hey, are you like me and you love the Treasuries at Etsy.com, but are frustrated with the stampede of trying to snag one? Be frustrated no more. Etsy has launched a new Treasury system that they are now Beta-testing, called Treasury East.

Gotta say, it ROCKS.

What’s a Treasury? Great question. In Etsy’s own words: “The Treasury is an ever-changing, member-curated shopping gallery of handpicked items.” So, it’s sort of like a favorites list, or a collection put together by users based on themes, colors, craft type, a play on words, whatever the Treasury curator wishes. They’re often very lively and a great way to find new things and previously undiscovered shops on Etsy. And, there is always one treasury featured on the front page of Etsy, showing just a peek of the many hundreds of thousands

However, the last time that I tried to make a Treasury was probably in 2006, it was just too bothersome and hard to be at the very right place at the very right time with all of my selected ducks in a row. So, I didn’t even try for the past 4 years.

The way that the current / soon to be old Treasury system worked, there was a finite number of Treasuries and once one expired it was chaos with hundreds to thousands of Etsy users trying to get that next open spot at any given time.

There are some new features, such as no longer being Flash-based (hey! I can see Treasuries on my iPhone now, thanks), and best (!) lists in Treasury East are not limited to a finite number nor do they currently have expiration dates. This means that anyone, at any time can curate and create a Treasury. Hooraay!

So go play with a Treasury East jimmy-jawn today. For all of the new features, rules, and most importantly, add your own suggestions & experiences, read over this thread on Etsy all about the new Treasury East. And, to find out if your shop is currently featured in a Treasury East list, check out this nifty tool from Craftopolis that will show you, Etsy East Hunt. (Note, you will need to have an active Google Analyitcs account linked to your Etsy shop to pull the info. Currently there isn’t a tool to see if your shop is featured on Treasury East yet via Etsy itself.)

Have you played around with making a new Treasury using Treasury East yet? I’d love to read any comments and see what other Etsy users think too.

Flatstock is a series of rock poster shows & conventions that happen currently 4 times a year in Austin, TX (during SXSW), Chicago, IL (during Pitchfork Music Festival), Seattle, WA (during Bumbershoot Music Festival) and Hamburg, Germany (during the Reeperbahn Festival). The Flatstock shows provide the public with opportunities to see fine poster art in person and to meet the artists who’ve created it, while showcasing the breadth of individual styles they represent. Since beginning in 2003, Flatstock has presented 20 events in the U.S. and Europe and has become the epicenter of the current phenomenon in handmade poster art.

Myself and over 40 other national poster artists will be there at Flatstock selling prints, posters and more and talking with thousands of music and art fans. Come see us, say hi, and chat. We’re mostly super nice, and definitely geeky about art.

And, check out the map of Union Park, Pitchfork’s stages and Flatstock’s location in Union Park.

So, wow. When the extremely rad, Chicago-based Venus Magazine contacted me at the end of the winter about doing a feature on women in the rock poster scene, I was floored. But, also, in true strawberryluna fashion, pretty sure that not a whole lot would come of it. I mean, come on, Venus is a great magazine dedicated to women, art, music, culture and the places where they collide. It seemed too cool to be true.

Well, I was wrong. Happily. After talking on the phone with Christine Bejasa for about 45 minutes one very grey, dreary and cold Pittsburgh afternoon, I was pretty excited. And now, I can share my stokage.

Some things that I said about posters...(Click for a larer view.)

Profiling Miss Amy Jo of Minneapolis, Judge from Chicago, and myself, strawberryluna, straight outta Pittsburgh, the article was a fun read and definitely sheds some light on not only what’s it’s like being a working rock poster artist, but in being part of a larger world of printmakers, illustrators and designers making a go of this weird life. For larger and easier to read images head over to my Flickr site here!

Th art & words of poster artist, Judge. (Click for a larer view.)

The article is on news stands now, in the summer 2009 issue of Venus Magazine. If you like it, and dig the issue, consider a subscription. I promise, this magazine never fails to be rad.

Lots and lots to tell, but overall the show was really successful. I feel like we all got to talk to a lot of new folks, see some happily familiar faces and once again get people jazzed about posters and music and the art in between them. Such a great feeling. Especially since the Flatstock show was 4 days long this year, up from the former 3-day event.

Dan, cool cat from Crosshair, photo by Mary Sledd

The Austin Chronicle’s Audra Schroeder wrote up a very nice piece about Flatstock and it’s tradition with SXSW here with some super photographs accompanying the article by Mary Sledd, above and below.

Me, strawberryluna, doin' my thing. Photo by Mary Sledd.

Dave Witt, being awesome. Photo by Mary Sledd.

Flatstock is a really crazy mix of super hard work and high-energy talking, particularly the SXSW version and then…so much fun. We bunked up with our best pals from Hero Design Studio, as per usual, and the laughs seriously never stop. Just when you think it’s bedtime and you can’t take any more? BOOM. The North American Free Trade Agreement becomes the funniest thing to happen all week.

We loved Austin so much that we made a very special stop at Cavender’s Boot City in Austin (with the world’s loudest women’s rest room EVER) on the way to taking our good friends, the Doublenauts to the airport on our last full day in town. Check out the boots that I could not pass up.